“Do you mean that if I didn’t want him fetched you wouldn’t go?”
“I mean that. I would let some one else go.”
“Why not let some one else go now, then? A man on an island must be fetched. Why should you make it a personal thing?”
“Because I want everything between you and me to be personal. I want my chance, that’s all. You say a man on an island must be fetched. Do you realize that for me to do it is an act of heroism? Supposing it would suit me that Hastings should stay forever on the island, what then? Suppose that in fetching him off the island I know I destroy my one chance of happiness, and I still fetch him—for your sake—what does that argue?”
“I can’t argue—I hate it. He is cold and wet—he is cold and wet because I behaved like an idiot—he must be fetched.”
“Many a time during the last few days I have wished to drown him.”
Diana said she didn’t believe him, but he assured her it was true. “Just as heartily as he has wished to drown me,” he added.
That Diana refused to believe.
“No? Well, then, his position is evidently more assured than I imagined it, and he is a more fortunate man than I am—he can afford to be magnanimous. Well, I am going to fetch him for your sake—you can’t rob me of that nobility of character—I shall fetch him in order to make you happy—just as I would do anything else in the world to make you happy. It will make you happy—I should like to be certain of that—before—”
Diana said of course it would make her happy that any one cold and miserable should be made warm and happy, “But I don’t want you to run any danger—that I wouldn’t face myself. I will come with you.”